Free At Last

Day 11 of an 11day shift. This place is destroyed. Dishes and yoga texts and amplifiers and clothes everywhere. A bouquet of glasses on the desk where I write this. The construction crews have moved back in. RJ’s telling us that they’ll be here until March 24. My back is sore and I’m terribly fagged. 11days of getting up in the middle of the night. Luckily the shift stretched over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I haven’t shaved in over a week. My hair is like a bouffant full of angry raven.
I haven’t seen anything remarkable over the last 11 days. Just waves of group think on the social networks: dull&empty holiday sentiment and even duller repeated and recanted zeitgeists about gun control. In fact, after two straight weeks of listening to you talk about the shooting, it started to die down. Then a few of you wiseguys started posting about how the whole thing was staged. And that’s when we deleted you. It feels good. I think I hit three, which is good, I had some catching up to do.Drinks for all my friends!-Henry Chinaski from Barfly

It’s ok. Heads know me. They know when Jimbo’s rawhiding or rather when I should just let ol Uncle Sprinkles take the wheel. That’s right-Uncle Sprinkles Homeslice, Uncle Jimmy, J.Holmwood formally. I met Uncle Sprinkles up in the Catskills one twisted cold spring in the Year of the Horse. Back when I was hot, young, running free a little bit better than I used to be. We were up in the Catskills catering to the filthy rich celebrating Passover. 10 days of serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to the rich and the Jewish in upstate NY. I think the pay was $1,500 and whatever tips you could get from your “family” for being unobsequious and ingratiating (of which I am neither). Uncle Jimmy is a big loud and hairy man from the Bronx. He pulled up to the dining hall in a golf cart wearing yellow aviators and a red bowtie, smoking a Maduro and laughing like emphysema.

“Let me tell you, those Rican girls from Queens know how to party!” He yelled at me and stuck his hammy hand in mine.

It’s been some strange, dead years since I was a jagoff Pirate on the Hospitality Circuit. Soaked to the bone in booze. I went up with some friends and the X (bad idea). The whole thing was a bad idea but yet perfectly in line with my diehard philosophy and work ethic of: whole lotta hell, whole lotta money. Anyhoo, Unkle Sprinkles took me on as his nephew. He said I feel too much and I’m too honest (he also offered me some of the strangest and most potent advice ever offered me in my 37 years-Chicks dig liars). I have certainly had my share of trouble living with my heart on my sleeve all these years. For some stupid reason I took a stand when I was 19. I chose homelessness over music school and I’ve been underemployed for over 20 years. But I loved heartfirst back then. And…never again. It must be love because when I look back, even though I miss those witchy warrior women, I miss the part of myself that could be open to them. To spend weekends falling deeper. To confess in temples of sweat and lying under windows open to the poetry of the street. I miss being completely riveted by a woman. All to their credit. Feels like the playing field has been leveled. No one compares. Or better, no one can play ball with the old soldier. Maybe I am tougher than the rest.

But upon the exhaustive advice from one of my favorite witchy women that apparently chicks can tell if you’re getting laid all the time (and they don’t like it?), I have given up sex. I get it. I mean I knew I wasn’t steadfast on the path when it came to sex. Hell, Bramacharya could be considered thee roadblock in the way of my Yogic education (that or a 91page book of poetry that I don’t even own a copy of). Or-21 days on a beer soaked mountain that shook off all my students and my practice and plunged me back into the depths of alcoholism.

I don’t know. But-we will walk through the door and get on with the end of the dirty year. Through the door and into the streets of the city-alone and insufferable (since 1975). I’ve done allot of walking over the past 11 days. When you’re job confines you to be indoors for 21 hours a day, you take to the streets to reason out your loneliness, beat the pig-iron night and scissor the bad blues with loud insolent bootheels cracking against wet December pavement.
I am a recidivist. But I am a tireless fighter. Survival is no longer prize but winning is fighting another day.

See you on the streets motherfucker.

so it goes, so it goesso it goes, so it goesbut where it’s goingno one knows.
-Rockpile

Jim Trainer is a communicator. Growing up in the hardcore scene of the early 90’s taught him everything he needed to know about real work. Jim Trainer believes in rock and roll. It may be our only salvation in this dark world. He’s carried the torch for independent media, broadcasting ... Continue reading →